Proximity
by Nyx Raisa
Summary: He never touches her... A new kind of writing style I was trying. Let me know what you think.


A/n Something random I was trying. Rated for reference to "adult activities" and I don't mean paying the bills. This is an unbeta'd work, so any mistakes are mine and mine only, unless they are something really stupid, in which case I will wholeheartedly blame them on someone else. Please leave nice reviews. If you do any flaming, I reserve the right to flame you back. Oh, House and all related characters belong to David Shore and whoever else, not me, I'm just playing with them for a while, I promise to put them back when I'm done. Read on.

He never touches her.

He never touches her, and she knows it, he _knows_ she knows it, knows it by the slight upward quirk of one corner of her beautiful mouth, by the almost-but-somehow-not-quite challenging lift of her eyebrow. He knows it by the way she sometimes seems to _test_ him, how she will stand just a little bit closer to him than absolutely necessary, close enough for him to be able to see the pulse throbbing on the side of her throat, hear the soft puffs of her breath, occasionally catching altogether too brief whiffs of her; part fruity shampoo and part flowery perfume, utterly feminine and so uniquely Cameron. It is her scent he thinks about most often in the dim reaches of the night when he can't sleep. He wonders what it would be like to breathe in an entire lungful of that scent instead of brief, tantalizing hints or how her scent would differ when mixed with his; a heady feminine odor, of musk and flowers and sweat dampened skin and it is this thought that most frequently causes his hand to slip beneath the waistband of the boxer shorts he sleeps in.

It is only afterward, when he is spent and panting that it occurs to him to question himself; how the _hell_ he let her get to him, and how he can make her _stop_.

It infuriates him, _she_ infuriates him, makes him want to hurt her, break her, slap that challenging, deviant, lifted-eyebrow look off of her face, do something, anything, whatever it takes to make her back away and _stay_ away. She pushes him, dares him to push back, taunts him with proximity and then acts like it's nothing, merely coincidence, but that defiant glint in her eyes is more then enough proof that she knows _exactly_ what she's doing…and what she's doing to _him_.

In all honesty, she has no idea.

She _thinks_ she does, she knows she's pushing him, no doubt about that, but she really has no idea what happens when Dr. Gregory House is pushed to past his breaking point. She's attempting to force the sarcastic, snarky, bitter-cranky-doctor façade to slip or even drop completely if only for a split second, just to see what he's like without the walls. She thinks he's vulnerable, lonely, _damaged_, and if she can get to where he's broken, she could fix him. And god help him, but she might be right.

So he does what he does best; he's a complete bastard. He can't let her know that she's getting to him, that her pushing is getting somewhere, so he tries to push her away. He rarely talks to her about anything but the patient at hand, and even then half the time it's an insult. Her hair, her clothes, her personal life (or lack thereof), anything and everything is fair game in this. He keeps hoping his assholishness will back her off, proving that he really _is_ just an asshole and it's _not_ just a wall to keep her and everyone else away, but somehow she knows better. He'll cut her up a thousand ways on Monday, and on Tuesday, she'll be back with coffee and a sweet smile, the one he swears she only uses for him, he's never seen it on her face for anybody else (not that he keeps track of such things) and he wants to scream at her, tell her to just get the hint and go _away_. But he would be wrong about that; she's gotten the hint. She _knows_ the hint. She just doesn't care. She endures his anger and his sarcasm and his bastardly ways because she knows somehow that she's winning.

He quite simply cannot allow that.

He can't let her have the upper hand, if only because he is competitive by nature and can't stand to lose. Regardless of the competition.

So sometimes he'll push her, let her be the one with the racing pulse and overheated skin and vast endless images flickering throughout her head like a neverending movie montage of pleasure/pain. He pushes her even though he knows she'll only redouble her efforts on him. He might refrain from touching her but he still pushes, enjoying her reaction in more then just some vaguely revengeful way.

_She had been standing too close to him all week, making him feel old and ungainly and had taken to "accidentally" brushing past him, letting her fingers linger on his arm or shoulder, leaving him feeling warm and too sensitive and frustrated. Even the brief touch of her fingers under his as she handed him his customary mug of coffee Friday morning was somehow nearly too much, leaving him unable to do more then take a customary sip before having to leave the room without trying to look like he was escaping. He'd leaned his forehead against the cool wall of the men's bathroom, eyes closed and breathing in deep, even lungfuls for nearly five minutes before the door whooshed open and without having to turn around or even open his eyes, he knew it was Wilson._

_"Go away," he grumbled, too out of sorts to form a proper snark._

_"She's getting to you," was Wilson's only reply._

_"Don't you think I_know_ that?" He yelled, surprised at the depth of his anger. He whirled around (as best he could, anyway) but in the midst of his anger, he missed the sound of the door's exiting whoosh. Wilson was gone._

_He'd returned only to find Cameron, staring at their latest patient's differential on the markerboard with the furrowed brow look of intense concentration on her face. An idea formed in his mind, utterly perfect and complete and he moved to put it into action with absolutely no forethought whatsoever._

_He moved as quietly as he could under the circumstances (which was, in truth, not really all that quietly) but the good doctor Cameron must have been concentrating quite hard for she did not acknowledge his presence until he was directly behind her._

_"You shouldn't do that, Dr. Cameron; your face may stick that way."_

_She twitched in surprise and he watched, fascinated, as tiny goosebumps rose out of her skin at the sound of his voice, low and deep and almost directly in her ear. She showed no other reaction although he could tell her attention was now completely focused on him, despite the fact that she was still staring straight ahead, under the pretense she was thinking about the patient's symptoms. He could feel her wanting to move, but there was nowhere for her to move. Her retreat to the rear was blocked by his body, blocked to the front by the markerboard and there was not enough room for her to be able to turn to either side without touching him and escape that way._

_She hadn't said anything but he could practically see the wheels in her head turning, trying to come up with some witty comment or scathing remark, something to relieve the overwhelming tension filling the room, something to remove it before it grew unbearable._

_House was unaffected; or he would've been, if he were not so absurdly mesmerized by the woman in front of him. His attention was captivated by the curve of her spine, watching it move as she breathed, watching it stop just a hairbreadth from his chest at the crest of her inhalations. He could feel the heat coming off her in slow waves and was helpless to wonder what it would be like if he could breach that infinitesimal distance; to be able to wrap his arms around her and pull her flush against his body, to bury his face in her hair and just_ breathe_, to taste the skin of her throat, below her collarbone, the inside of her thigh…. He closed his eyes with the effort of trying_not_ to wonder about these things, but the action only succeeded in intensifying the images capering behind his eyelids and he backed away before she could see how she was affecting him. He limped away as quickly as he could and did not see her shoulders sag slightly or the faint redness rising to her cheeks that his proximity had caused._

She pushes; he pushes back. House knows this little mental shoving match can't go on forever; maybe she will get fed up with his constant assholery and leave. Maybe she will leave anyway. Maybe he will. Maybe they'll just by some unspoken agreement get tired of the same old song and dance that had been going on from practically the moment he had hired her. Or maybe…maybe she will actually succeed in pushing him over the edge and he'll forget all the reasons he's been telling himself why he should stay away from her. Then he'll have no choice but to take her back to his place and have his way with her in every single position he could think of and probably invent a few more for the occasion. The sex wasn't the problem (the sex would be great; hell, the sex would probably be amazing, new positions notwithstanding) but it was what came _after_ (or because of) the sex that House had the greatest difficulty with. Relationships. Commitment. Love. Things all women would invariably want and Dr. Allison Cameron was surely no exception. This was not to say that he was unable to do these things; he was perfectly capable of carrying on a committed relationship. Stacy was proof enough, regardless of how _that_ turned out. He just chose not to. Sort of a different take on buying the cow when the milk is free. Why worry about having to take care of a cow, when for a few hundred dollars you can get a whole night's worth of milk.

He's tried to tell Cameron how he is and how things would be with him. He would hurt her. He would leave her brokenhearted. She would want more then he would ever be able to give her. He was an old, bitter, cranky, Vicodin-addicted cripple. That was never going to change, no matter how much she wanted him to. He tried to tell her these things in every way he would think of but just coming out and saying it. Every purposefully hurtful comment directed at her had an underlying message of "Don't get involved with me. I am a bastard. I am an insensitive jerk. Go away. I will hurt you." Either she wasn't getting those extra added messages or she was just ignoring them. He figured it was probably the latter; she wasn't stupid. It made him want to shake her and ask her why she didn't seem to care that he was an insensitive jerk.

He wants to know what she sees in him to make her keep _pushing_, what sort of reaction she's looking to provoke, what outcome she is ultimately working towards. If she doesn't stop pushing, he supposes he'll find out soon enough.


End file.
